February 4, 2009

Europeans and Russians now prefer to eat less meat and switch from expensive kind of meat, beef that is, to something less expensive - poultry and pork.

Such new tastes may ruin European breeders, particularly beef suppliers.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is concerned about the countries that reduce their food imports.

Russia, for example, refused from the import of the French pork, which posed a serious danger to the nation's pork processing industry.

Russian experts confirm that the meat branch suffers the largest losses in the food industry because of the crisis.

People prefer to buy pork instead of beef. One-third of the Russian meat is imported. The dollar rate has skyrocketed against the ruble recently, which is bad news for the population and very good news for Russian meat-makers: meat imports will not be growing.

Russia's refusal from the import of French pork coincided with a report from the USDA, which said that Russia planned to increase its pork import on the US market.

International experts say that the consumption of meat in Europe will drop by 400,000 tonnes in 2009.

The level of consumption in Russia dropped to the lowest level during the recent three years.

The majority of Russian consumers said that they could notice prices on food stuffs and basic goods growing considerably by 17 percent in three months.